"Wow, that was quick."

April 19, 2008 8:22 AM

A google search confirms: "Time flies when you're having fun" is actually true, because the body's internal clock is influenced by dopamine. However, when the alarm goes off and I groggily stumble out of bed, it has been my life-long experience that times passes quickly. This seems like a contradiction.

On those mornings when I need to have some kind of food or drink in order to get moving, it seems like the minutes are only 30 seconds long. Of course this is just a perception, so I can't say any more than that. Could there be dopamine left over from happy dreams?

posted by proj08 to health & fitness (7 comments total)

I get this in the mornings too. To me it feels like a couple of different things. First of all, the morning consists of a bunch of different activities, each of which I always underestimate ("Okay, 5 minutes to shower, 2 minutes to shave, 3 minutes to get dressed...") Second (of all), I find in the mornings it's very easy to start planning the day or thinking about work, and before long I've spent a minute or two just standing and thinking without even noticing.

Reading that over, it sounds like I'm some kind of morning slob with the time perception of a newborn kitten, but those are the things that screw up my internal clock.
posted by pocams at 8:43 AM on April 19, 2008

if your question is whether or not its dopamine, i would guess not. just cuz time flies when you are having fun doesnt mean it doesnt fly at other times also.

i have that same experience in the morning. i sit down at the computer for a quick woot-check and one work related thing. i usually stop by askme for a minute and before i know it 15 minutes are gone like that.

maybe it has something to do with not quite being fully awake yet. i dunno...
posted by gcat at 8:53 AM on April 19, 2008

I guess it depends how occupied you are; if you're doing stuff and you're not bored and looking at the clock every second before long you realize it's almost 3am and you should be in bed. Plus, I imagine in the morning your brain is still 'booting up' from sleep so is still getting up to speed, and c., so your perhaps otherwise accurate sense of time is diminished. Like when one has been drinking.
posted by oxford blue at 9:59 AM on April 19, 2008

I'd have to postulate that dopamine might influence the feeling of time passing quickly, but that doesn't mean it's the *only* thing that influences it.

Whenever there really isn't enough time to do something (like get ready for work in the morning, or finish a task for a client according to an unreasonable schedule), time would seem to pass faster than you'd like. I'm sure that's why time flies for me in the morning, and of course that has nothing to do with dopamine. But on the days when I actually give myself enough time (that is, when I don't oversleep), then I have plenty and it doesn't seem to pass faster.

Then there is also the phenomenon of time passing faster when you are occupied vs. when you are idle. That in fact might be dopamine related. I don't know much about it but I imagine that when your brain and body are active and working (on whatever), it is happier than when you're sitting around with nothing to occupy yourself with. So, time flies vs. crawls.
posted by iguanapolitico at 10:07 AM on April 19, 2008

(I should have said in my 2nd paragraph, "...that has nothing to do with *having fun*.")
posted by iguanapolitico at 10:09 AM on April 19, 2008

"Time flies when you're having fun" does not imply "Time does not fly when you are having a bad time." It's a different cause. In my personal experience, time also tends to fly when I'm not paying attention -- and on mornings like you describe, I don't tend to be paying very much attention.
posted by voltairemodern at 10:28 AM on April 19, 2008

You could also be coming out of a brain wave state from being interrupted in the middle of your sleep cycle. That would make a lot of people a little foggy/tranced out until they are fully awake, thus, not noticing the passage of time. My husband swears by the info here and he absolutely refuses to use an alarm clock.

I myself tend to drift off, staring into space in the mornings, until I've had a few cups of coffee and been up for a while. You can look up brain wave states and sleep cycles in Google to find out more.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 10:37 AM on April 19, 2008